Footage has emerged purporting to show devastating new evidence of the summary execution of Tamil prisoners by government soldiers in Sri Lanka.

Readers are advised that they may find some of the detail in this article distressing.

In a separate incident to the one Channel 4 News broadcast last year, never before seen mobile phone footage has emerged, which experts say appears to depict genuine executions of people bound and blindfolded.

The footage, allegedly captured on a mobile phone by a soldier as a trophy video, shows three people, including one woman, dressed in civilian clothes and kneeing on the floor in a wooded area.

Their eyes are covered and their hands appear to be tied behind their backs.

A group of soldiers carrying guns look down on the group as one man, who appears to be in charge, goads others into shooting the prisoners.

“Is there no one with the balls to kill a terrorist?” he says, while calling another a “wimp” for not firing his gun.

“This bugger has a weapon and still seems scared of a terrorist,” he says.

The soldiers are then instructed to raise their weapons and aim “directly at the head”.

As gun shots ring out, two prisoners fall on their sides, while the other falls on his face, his blood covering the ground.

Metadata encoded within the video indicates it was recorded on 15 May 2009, amid a final push by government forces to drive out Tamil fighters in the last few days of the bloody civil war.

During this period up to 40,000 Sri Lankan civilians are believed to have died.

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In a second new video, a man tied to a coconut tree is again filmed by soldiers on a mobile phone. Visibly in shock, shirtless and with blood covering his chest, he shifts his body as a circle of soldiers surround him.

In a series of photographs passed to Channel 4 of the same incident, the prisoner is threatened with a knife while still tied to the tree.

He is then pictured dead and in a ditch. His body appears to be draped in a Tamil flag.

A spokesman for Ban Ki-Moon said in April that without the consent of Sri Lanka’s government, or a decision by the UN Security Council, General Assembly, Human Rights Council or other international body, a formal investigation of the civilian deaths was not possible.